Shallow
{As evidence by the comments, I didn't make this one very clear at all. Reading the comments will clarify things a bit, and here's the original: 
}
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September 28, 2005
Good Morning
Waking up to you is one of my favourite things in life
Dammit Rusty
Jeri in Florence
Just some sprucing up
September 22, 2005
First Try
This was my first attempt at refinishing a photograph that wasn't in the best shape. I ended up with this:
Which started out as this: 
Horse Poop
The dumb after:
And the dumb before
September 21, 2005
Stolen
From Flickr....the end result is this
But it began like so
Made Over
I think I know what Sweet Jeri is going to say when she sees this, an emphatic and disgusted "Men!". Ah, such is life. Oddly, it was difficult to find a close up of a face; I would have preferred more of the face to work with, such is life. For the record, I have no clue as to who she is or was.
The After (obviously)
And the Before
Coloured Again
I think I like the results from the previous entry better, I didn't have access to as big, or clear a picture for this one. I'll keep plugging away though.
September 19, 2005
Project Of The Day
I can't wait to hear the grousing about this picture being available on the internet.
And how it used to be:
Photoplays
The hell with Worth 1000, my new goal is to be confident, and capable enough to compete overe here at Retouch Pro. These guys are freakin amazing. Check out the gallery of challenges and see what I'm talking about.
September 18, 2005
Updating
With the exception of my hair growth articles, I haven't posted much of interest in a few days. This is not to say that I haven't been occupying myself, or not participating in activities of interest.
I spent Wednesday afternoon with a very dear friend, Mr. Matthew Voss. It's been far too long since I last hung out with him, and I regret this absence. So much happens in life, and happens so quickly, it seems absolutely stupid not to spend time with people while you can. Sure, now I'll want to spend countless hours fraggin him in Half Life 2, such is life. Actually, anyone whose watched me play Matt knows....wait...only Mr. Balou ever watched...that the scamp could snipe me from 1000 yards.
Within the world of Visceraman1, I've reworked the Projects page. I have to add a few screenshots of the websites referenced, I'll get to that soon, not really that high of a priority. I'll be changing the links on that page to reflect the software, and people I admire for the design, photography, photoshop and coding skills. The front page links will lean towards those who spend more time writing than tinkering, and humoring than coding. Of course, this now means that my little self indulgent projects will no doubt be posted in two areas.
The knitting? It's probably about time I ask Sweet Jeri to snap a few photos of my porky fingers whipping the yarn into shape. I'd been quite frustrated with my work, would cast on a dozen or three stitches, and when I finished knitting the first row, I'd find that my last stitch was a bit too loose. Seeing this as a horrible mistake, I would rip everything apart and start over, only to have the same results. Sure my moms had told me to keep going, but, no, I'd rip and start over. Friday night at the craft store, I heard again, just keep going. So, I kept going. And it worked. The looser stitch isn't noticeable at all - of course, with as many holes as I've made, how could anyone notice anything else? I also made myself learn how to switch colours, and will have to go back to the store for a needle to weave my ends in. Very exhilirating to finally get it.
September 15, 2005
Growing My Hair Out
For the shot I chose to use, adding hair to my head will be a bit easier, since I'm outside, wearing scruffy clothes (much to the chagrin of the Italian folk), so it doesn't have to be perfect. Remember the steps needed to create a brush stroke from the previous article, we need to create at least 3 brushes for hair. This of course will depend on the hairstyle you're creating, but mine is simple, with just three brushes needed. Why different brushes? For the left side, right side and the back of the hair. This is easier, and much faster than it sounds.
Let's go back to where we left off:
Again, we need three differnt brush strokes for this hair. One for each side of the head, and part of the back. This is a snap though. Following the steps from before, create a brush stroke that looks like this:
Then, it's just a matter of Ctrl + T to transform the brush to the angles desired.
See, it's so easy, it's dumb!
Each are saved separately, and voila, we can start adding some hair. Let's go back to our bald guy.
It doesn't matter what side of the head you start on, just start brushing some hair (black) in there. Start with a small (3px) brush, and work your way up from there. Before you know it, you'll be done.
You're going to get hair, all over the place. Let me say that again, you're going to get hair all over the place. Don't fret.
When you're done, you're going to give him a haircut anyway, so the hell with it. Get a lot of hair in there. Cover the outline of the head completely, otherwise it will look even worse. Change colours, and sizes often!
Just after the haircut,
A few finishing touches and here you go:
Before: (Well I had to fix a few things)
During:
And after:
Growing A Beard
I was browsing about the Worth 1000 website the other night, and saw that they had a contest that involved adding hair to various items. This picqued my interest a bit. Sure the contest submitters are considerably more advanced, and pretty fucking creative I might add. Instead of focusing on the advanced nature of their skills, I decided instead that I would attempt to add hair. But how? And to what. Ah ha! Among my physical inadequacies, there lies a problem hairline. Not the worst hairline ever, but one that I deemed necessary to remove. I could add hair to myself, and since I have never posted pictures of me with hair, (not to mention, no one reads this site but a select a loyal few), no one would be the wiser. I also thought, instead of just posting the before and after results, I would attempt to show the work in progress. I may miss a few steps, the results may not be perfect, but what the hell. Let's go.
I first had to find a good shot of myself. (Insert vanity joke here Sweet Jeri). (On a side note, this photo was taken by Jeri, and therefore belongs to her, and her alone...hopefully she doesn't mind too much. It's either that or I turn her into a wookie!). Here's a shot of me in Italy, showing now hair, save for a very, very closely cropped goatee:
Then, cracking open my trusty Photoshop CS (legal copy), I set about my work. The first item up would be to create a brush stroke to use for my hair creation. I opened a new document, I only need a small one, and no background colour. So, I began with a 64px by 64px w/ transparent background.
So, next I have to create some brush strokes to use. I need something coarse for the beard area, and something different for the hair line. I'll focus on just the beard area for now. (At this point, I have no idea what hair style I want, which means I also don't know the best way to create such a thing). I'm going to start by just adding some stubble, and begin building the beard from there. Should we go with a full beard?
Now, you've got your small document open...(by the way, this step will involve a considerable amount of trial and error to get it right....at least it did for me). Make a new, and temporary white layer below your transparent one, and then zoom in on your document. I tried a few different percentages, but found 300% worked the best. Select a medium gray color, and a small round brush. I tried several different sizes, and found that the 3px brush gave good results, though I did increase to 4px for one of my stubbles. This is another one of those things you'll want to play around with.
Lower your opacity to about 50% and make a few marks on your document.
Hide your temporary background, and select Edit > Define Brush Pattern:
A dialog box will pop up, and you can name this whatever the hell you want to..you're going to rename it anyway.
And now the fun begins!
I have no idea how your workspace is set up, I usally have brushes docked, but you may not. If not, just go to Window > Brushes, and your brush preset window will appear. This is where we have to really define the brush behaviour, and again, this part took me quite a few tries to get exactly what I wanted.
In the brush preset window, click on the Shape Dynamics section. The only thing we're concerned with here is the angle our brush stroke will be. Since beards, or any hair, doesn't grow in perfect lines, (save for dolls, or lame implants), we want our stroke to have that same random quality. In the middle, for Angle Jitters, raise the amount to a high percentage. You can go 100% or so.
Next turn on Scattering. This spreads your brush out a bit, adding to the uneven random stroke. At this point, also make sure your smoothing option is on and you're just about done.
The last thing to do, is to save your new brush. Click the flyout arrow and select New Brush Preset. I called mine Stubble Brush, but what difference does that make.
Now, we're going to start adding stubble to our picture. If you don't like the results you're getting, just make a new brush. HA! This is where I really found myself going back to the drawing board over and over again. This part is the easy part, mainly because you can be as sloppy as you want, no need to stay within the lines at all. Bring up the photo you're adding hair to.
Make a duplicate layer of the original, and zoom in on the picture. My picture was fairly large to begin, I zoomed in to 300%, and would increase to 400% periodically. Play with, and alter the size of your brush also. 1px, 3px, and 5px were the best to work with, and you're going to go out of the lines - don't fuss about that. In fact, if your neck is visible like mine is, that's all the better.
Zoom out periodically and check your progress. As you can see, I have a pretty even stubble line, that extends up to where my hair should be.
My beard color is odd. I have different shades of brown and red in there, so the next thing I did was to take a colour sample from my original photo, and add a second layer of stubble. This isn't overly noticeable in the photo, but more accurate. It also thickens things up a bit.
My intent is to create a full beard. I could stop here, or even sooner if all I wanted was a light stubble, or 5 0'Clock shadow.
So, it's back to creating a new brush stroke before we can continue. This will use the same principle as the stubble brush but since I want it to be more beard like, may take a bit longer. In order to begin, we have to take note of what beard hair looks like. I've plucked a few from different parts of my goatee as a reference point, and see that I have straight, thin, coarse, curly, and short hairs. So, my in order for my fake beard to blend properly and appear somewhat natural, my brush stroke will have to contain these different aspects as well. And now I bring up the file I used to create my stubble brush, and add a new layer.
I'll start with the same premise, a small 3px round brush, and I'm going to create different size lines, curves etc., fairly close together....not quite pubic hair like, but not that different either.
The brush stroke I finally settled on is this:
After clicking Edit>Define Brush Pattern, and again opened up the brush window and made a few alterations to the brush. The stroke needs to be somewhat random still, but not as random as the stubble. Under Shape Dynamics, raise the Angle Jitter to anywhere from 15-45%. Stop when you see what you like in preview panel. Click on Scattering and lower it to 2.
Once this part of the beard brush is defined, save it as a new brush pattern, and away we go. We're going to adjust the scattering dynamics of the brush as we go along, to thicken and thin the beard. Bring up your photo again, and add a new layer, and zoom in to about 400%.
Select black as your foreground colour again, and start brushing in some hair. It doesn't mattter where the hair falls (don't get it too far off the fact), because we can erase...er trim this later. How much hair to add depends on the look you want. Mountain Man? Biker? Hippy? Whatever. Again, play with the size of you brush. Mine defaults to about 29px, but I only use 3-15px. (You can set the default in your brush preset window). Don't focus on only adding black, unless your beard is jet black. Add varying colours, and sample the colours found naturally. If you don't have anything to sample from, find a photo of a real beard, or use a wide variety of colours.
See, I've got it on my neck, in my ears etc. This will come off later. It's still a bit thin around the chin, so I'm going to thicken that up, and hide my chin a bit more.
And now, I'm ready for a bit of a shave. You can use any brush shape to erase, or create a new brush. Completely up to you. I'm only going to focus on cleaning up my cheeks, my lips, just under my lower lip, and make sure there's no hair on my ears. (My wife plucks those).
And I'm done, well almost. I'm leaving it like this, because it's not perfect. No beard is, unless you get it trimmed at the barber shop, or are pretty damn anal about it.
I'm going to stop here for now. I'll continue with my little tale later, when I add a cute little bob to my head.
September 14, 2005
Trainspotting
In the vein of Worth 1000, daily competition, I toyed with this for a bit:
(the original)
September 13, 2005
Romanesque
I thought the original photo was fine as it was. Just curious as to what it would look like after being played with. Unfortunately, I didn't have immediate access to the larger size file, had to make do with this tiny one. 
Original...I like it just the way it is.
Butterfly
I thought the original photo was lacking something. I don't know that I added anything to it, but enjoyed playing with it. I really don't like the size of the frame around the altered one, I think I should have gone with a simple thin, black. Perhaps with some sort of matting...next time.
The Original Photo.
September 12, 2005
That place in Italy
Tinkering With Conner
As the photo related category disappears and reinvents itself as Photo Play (yeah, I'm sure you noticed), I add some musings of Ty Pessins chap. For some reason he's pretty easy to alter. Does it have to do with the bright colours of childrens toys? I don't know.
The Original
Updated Audio Feed
Hmmm.....which tracks do I not feed through the Audio Player? For now, the track list is as follows:
- Supernova
- Transgression
- Millennium
- Spinal Compression
- Contagion
- I will follow
- Echo of my Scream
- Empty Vision
The tracks are fairly varied, some for advocates of the lighter side, and for those of the heavier influence. No, no death metal present, just my friends from Fear Factory
Enjoy.
She's He's They're crafty
So this past week Sweet Jeri has been housesitting. Bravely living life by herself (no doubt enjoying the peace and quiet), eating all the candy she desires and tending to a few head of livestock. Missing her company, I caught a late flight out Friday night and joined her for the weekend. Naturally, as life in the country can be a bit mundane (read: no Tivo), I brought out the trusty xbox and a stack of titles to keep me occupied while Jeri fed and watered the farm animals, and did a bit of crafting.
That first evening I drove Jeri to the closest town, and after a hearty dinner, took her to a local craft store so she could stock up on supplies. I don't remember who made the joke about me taking up knitting, but it stuck in my head for the duration of the trip. Why couldn't I do that? Instantly, images of horrible holiday gifts passed in my mind. Garish sweaters with one short sleeve, one too long sleeve' snowmen emblazoned hats, and oy, the socks. I tried to immerse myself in Madden (2005, I know), Rocky and Mafia. I figured the more manly activities I did, the less I would think about the rolls of yarn I saw. It didn't work.
The owners of the ranch we were staying at, were of the crafting sort as well. I knew that somehwere under the piles of fabric, thread and such, that I would find some knitting equipment. Indeed I found some thread and sticks, and set about teaching myself a bit of knitting. The way I looked at it, I could learn, probably fail, and get this....whatever out of my system. That lasted nearly half an hour, until I became extrememly determined to figure the fucking thing out. I cast on. I knit. I tore it all apart. I cast on. I knit a row, I tore it all apart. I cast on, I knit 2 rows, I tore it all apart. (Clearly you can see my progress was, uh...shit). Without realizing it, I had spent nearly 4 hours trying to learn the craft, without much success. In fact, the only thing I had to show for it was extremely sore hands, and that's not really visible is it?
I threw the sticks down, and helped Jeri with the dispursing of slop to the livestock.
And then the ranchers arrive home from their travels. They immediately saw the knitting gear, and were quite animated about the fact that Jeri had taken up knitting. When Jeri announced that no, it was the fat, bald guy who was knitting, their faces went pale, and a look of fear appeared.
"It's quite the rage now for men to knit." They said. "What?" I asked. "Now you're mocking me." I whined. With a gentle pat on the back, they took me aside and gave me a quick, private lesson in knitting. My porky fingers began their flurry. Cast. Knit. Purl. Fuck it up. Cast. Knit. Purl. Fuck it up. So, nothing really changed.
On the plane trip home, I couldn't shake the notion that there was a large group of men that knit. "Fatty, you're just one of those....um....you know, gayish sorts." Jeri soothed. "Just make me socks, and a candy sack and I'll keep your secret for you....just like your failed military career." She said.
So this morning, I spent a few minutes googling the truth about this, and damned if it isn't true:
A guy from Detroit even bears a frightening similarity to me, though his hairline is much better. Joel can do it Clifford though a bit scary can do it. Dave does it. Not to mention a site devoted to men who knit, and even blogs about men knitting.
And so begins my new crafting hobby. Look for your too small/too floppy socks in your mailbox soon!
September 09, 2005
Diversions
A few more diversions from Stumbler:
September 07, 2005
Gassing
I remember being sent an email about this several months ago. I don't see how it could hurt to try, but how many people will actually participate?
Phillip Hollsworth offered this good dea. This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work. Please read on and join with us!
By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at about $1.50 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $2.79 for regular unleaded in my town. Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50 - $1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace, not sellers. With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. How?
Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.
Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers.
I'm not sure how they plan on reaching the requisite millions of Exxon/Mobil customers, and it seems like a long shot that those companies don't have enough wealth to keep everything operating normally during the 'gas out'. I actually think that it would cause gas prices to increase even more, punishing those that are unable to participate (institutions, cities, cabs, busses etc.) There should be a way to prevent the price gouging that's done by these companies, but those with the real power to do so, have their pockets lined by these companies, so what really can be done?
Listen to mp3 of this post
September 06, 2005
Transgression
Once thought extinct from the music scene, Fear Factory has once again proven why its talents are untouchable and incomparable.
Fuckers. Since day one they've amazed me, taunted, and encouraged. Fuckers. How they can only become more amazing, I don't know. Of course, I'll put some of their new magic up for you.
Fuckers.
Listen to mp3 of post
*Updated Audio Player to reflect the addition of Supernova, Transgression, Spinal Compression, Contagion and Millenium
September 02, 2005
Photo Archives
Yeah, but now I have to find all the pictures I've tweaked.....Until then:
{versus}
September 01, 2005
The Hard Way
Perhaps this time I'll have learned my lesson in backing up files properly. Yesterday, I thought I would make a few alterations in one of my cfg files, and not only trashed that file, but a few cgi files while I was at it. Shortly thereafter, I could no longer access most areas of my site directories. So I had to file a ticket with mediatemple to see if they could help me out. They did, but at the loss of my entries and comments. Fortunately, I made a half ass copy of my entries/comments, but have found that because I halfassed, there is no easy way to import these files. So, I quietly rebuilt my site, and began rebuilding the entry files. I haven't even begun to rebuild the comment files, that will happen later down the road. So, if you don't see your comment, it's not due to any pesky censorship - just my idiocy. Meanwhile, I backup my databases and files regularly.
